Posts Tagged "fandom"

South Korea is the pinnacle achievement of multi-media internet communications in the modern world. Nearly all communication in South Korea is almost entirely dependent on the digital world and as broadband has developed, newer forms of communications are beginning to dominate. Even as a country with a comparatively small population, South Korea boasts the second largest number of bloggers in the world. That number is surpassed only by the United States (Choi). Mobile phone usage to access blogging platforms, social networking sites, and multi-media sharing sites in South Korea surpasses nearly every other country on earth. According to a global study by the Financial Times nearly three-quarters of the total South Korean population is heavily reliant on mobile phones and multi-media communication as a part of daily life, surpassing Western Europe, the United States, and even Japan (Katz). That number has only continued to grow dramatically in recent years and covers both Korea’s cities and its rural countryside. The current reality of the situation is that South Korea is a fully wired world, the State’s citizenry is continually bombarded with digital media. This flood of media extends through pictures, music, blog posts of rants and manifestos, videos and video games, and it bleeds into the real world in the form of trends in everything from fashion to political opinions. The wired world phenomenon has created a new structure of interpersonal relationships that blurs the line between the virtual and the physical (Choi). Such an overwhelming mix of cyberspace and the world’s physical reality has become the norm and it means that typical advertising schemes are proving to be much less effective than they were when a singular ad at the bus-stop was the only thing people waiting for the bus had to look at. For many of South Korea’s industries, this has posed a serious problem. Adapting to the sudden demand of the market that a productbe everywhere at once, all over the internet, has been difficult for the slower-moving companies, especially the ones like grocery stores that had never before needed to advertise. Now, nearly every industry is clinging to the one industry tht boomed under the new pressure: Kpop. The Kpop Industry evolved right alongside...

Almost everyone knows what Comic-Con is. Most people have never gone to Comic-Con, but it’s importance in launching new shows and movies by having panels full of actors and sneak peaks at new footage have given it a reputation. Comic-Con San Diego is an annual event dating back to 1970. The three focuses of the convention are comic books, films, and science fiction/fantasy literature. The con was set up to give these medias more attention, and with over 130,000 attendees in the last few years, the strategy is clearly paying off. It has been so successful in fact, that in recent years cons have been springing up all over the place, bringing fans closer to then ever to their favorite characters, actors, movies, and t.v. shows. It began with the expansion of the San Diego Comic Convention’s Cons to include APE, WonderCon, ProCon, and Con/Fusion. These days though, cons have become show or movie specific. Recent and upcoming cons include EyeCon, (The Vampire Diaries and The Originals) BloodyNightCon, (The Vampire Diaries) Asylum 12, (Supernatural) Wolfs Bane 2, (Teen Wolf) Ravens, (Pretty Little Liars and One Tree Hill) The Final Journey, (Stargate) Days Of The Wolf (Teen Wolf) and the Official Star Trek Convention. These are just a few. Not only are these cons creating a new revenue stream for these shows and franchises, they are also altering the way fans interact with the texts that are these shows and movies. Often at these cons actors, writers, and directors give hints to the fans about what coming up in the new season. They will talk about deleted scenes, artistic intentions and background information the the audience is not privy to just by watching the show. T.V. shows and movies are are texts with multiple authors. There are the producers who pay for them and want them to look a certain way, directors who shoot them according to their particular vision, actors who play parts based on the backgrounds and personalities they create alongside the writers, who come up with the specific story lines for every shot. With the emergence of these cons fans are able to get a behind the scenes look at the process like they never...

With the advent of Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and Youtube, fans of T.V. shows and movies have been able to create and share works based on their favorite shows and stories with unprecedented speed and to more people then ever before. While this is not news, the entertainment industry’s brilliant use of these fan populated arenas to promote shows, movies, and individual actors is a fashion that has only recently taken off. While celebrities have owned twitter accounts and Facebook pages for some time, hoarding their million follower statuses like trophies, the emergence of actors and shows onto every platform available seems to be a recent occurrence. Take, for example, Sleepy Hollow. Sleepy Hollow is a show from Fox in its first season. It features mostly unknown actors and no outright famous ones (unless John Cho is your guy and you’ve seen Harold & Kumar 100 times). While it had great buzz from the very beginning, the success of the show seemed to surprise the industry. Even more so then it’s initial success, its continued high ratings in the 18-to-49 demographic for viewing – a 4.9 once playback is accounted for – have beaten more established shows like Grey’s Anatomy and NCIS. This supernatural drama, Fox’s highest-rated fall drama premiere in six years, has already been renewed for a second season. All this begs the question: What is this show doing differently? While the content and writing of this and every show is an integral part of its success, this show’s complete immersion into fan populated social media may be equally important in explaining its staying power and popularity. Sleepy Hollow has a Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Youtube channel. The buck doesn’t stop here though. The shows writers also have a twitter, as do the shows stars, Orlando Jones, Tom Mison, Katia Winter, Nicole Beharie and John Cho. With so many avenues for communication and exposure more people are able to interact with the storyline and its creators then ever before! Its fascinating, fun, and addicting to be able to tweet Orlando Jones and have him answer you. You feel like part of the Sleepyhead community (the moniker the fan base goes by) and the show itself. You become more...

Some months ago now, as I was perusing the Dragon Age Facebook page, the DA team had posted a wonderful piece of fan art by a Deviant Artist named Alteya who’s other work can be found Here. I was initially very impressed with the piece of art, but what truly astonished me was the amount of controversy that this seemingly innocuous piece of art had managed to create. This depiction of a fan’s Hawke caused out cry about what constituted the “canon” Hawke in Dragon Age II. On one side of argument, we have a collection of players (mostly, if not exclusively male) that insist that Hawke is canonically male. On the other side, which is much less polarized by gender, arguing against the notion of male Hawke as being canon or the notion of their being a canon at all. screenshot taken of fan discussion on Dragon Age Facebook page screenshot taken of fan discussion on Dragon Age Facebook page screenshot taken of fan discussion on Dragon Age Facebook page screenshot taken of fan discussion on Dragon Age Facebook page This got me thinking, did I believe in the idea of a canonical version of the story? My immediate answer was “no” but then I stopped to think about it. If we treat the game as a text, then the text has multiple narratives it can tell and each of those narratives have a host of different readings. The game itself adapts and changes based on the decisions a player makes at the time of character creation and more so throughout gameplay. My favorite initial character set up of “Female” “Mage” Hawke leads to different sorts of narratological interpretations then a friend of mine’s set up of “Male” “Warrior” Hawke. If we consider the narrative as a sort of nebula of possibilities, each decision we make impacts the potential outcomes. At the outset, we narrow our narrative’s potentiality fairly significantly. The choice of mage vs. non-mage is rather important, it dictates which of your Hawke’s siblings survives and how your character will be perceived (as much as the game is capable of handling such things) in the world. Mage Hawke is just going to logically be more sympathetic...

Flying effortlessly onto TIME 100’s List of The 100 Most Influential People Who Never Lived, Peter Pan has carved out a slice of History. Generally speaking, the average college student of 2013 is probably most familiar with the Disney’s 1953 animated film Peter Pan, but that is certainly not the original appearance of the Peter Pan character. Peter Pan’s very first appearance was a side note in J.M Barrie’s 1902 novel The Little White Bird, which was conceived as a partly whimsical fantasy story and partly comedic social commentary, both with extraordinarily dark undertones. Peter Pan’s story started out as a just a few short chapters (Chapter XIV – XVIII) in the Little White Bird, a section which was later adapted into its own novel (Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, 1906). The Peter Pan story was transmedia from its very beginning as the very first authorized adaption of the story was Barrie’s 1904 play, Peter and Wendy (which was adapted to take the story back into novel format in 1911, Peter and Wendy). Peter and Wendy is the origin of most of what is considered canon today, though it is Peter’s second appearance in literature and vastly different from his characterization in Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. That Peter doesn’t age, that he can fly without fairy dust, that he lives in Neverland (that Neverland is a world wholly separate from this one); all of it comes from Peter and Wendy rather than from the original character conception. In his original incarnation, Peter is a half-bird infant (as supposedly all infants are half bird), and just barely 7 days old when he flies away (after hearing, and perfectly understanding, a discussion about his adult life) to escape the horrors of growing up by hiding out in Kensington Gardens, where a crow named Solomon tells him he is much more boy than bird and Peter learns that he cannot actually fly. With his belief in his flying abilities dispersed, he finds himself stranded in Kensington Gardens. He befriends the fairies of Kensington by promising to play reed panpipes at their balls (a perfectly natural skill for a seven day old baby to have). The original Peter would have...